Worldlines on the Tree of Life

flatten the worldmap:




then stack a billion map layers
one for each year

each continent forms a
continent-shaped column

(the continents drift
only slowly)

each continent-column encloses
the leaky bush of its particular
subset of species

the ocean-columns, theirs

an individual's worldline
tracing thru
a tiny sliver
of the whole

Visualising calorie consumption

that drop of gasoline
that generated a hypothetical
watt-hour of electricity

contains 0.86 Calories of energy

a sugarcube, ten times that
(ten drops of gas)

an egg, 100 times (100 drops)
(you burn this much energy in an hour
just sitting)

a bowl of Oreo-flavored breakfast cereal
or a cup of whole milk, 150
(an hour at the computer)

a 16oz soda 200
a Krispy Kreme, a Dove Bar, or a cup of rice(!?) 300
(an hour walking)

a Big Mac, a large fries, or a large shake, 600
(an hour jogging or biking)

a cup of roasted nuts, 1000
(an hour racing)

a cup of peanut butter, 2000
a pound of waistline fat, 4000

a cup of 2800 drops of gasoline
equals 2400 calories
a cup of sugar about 800 calories
so 3 cups sugar = 1 cup of gas

The weather giant

i'm six miles tall

jets cruise past my head

i can hold 20 city blocks in the palm of my hand
the sears tower is smaller than my pinkie

most clouds barely reach my knees

when i sit i can wave my hand thru them
disperse them by blowing

i can make a tornado by twirling my finger

(hurricanes, though, are as tall as
me standing full height
and wider than i can throw a rock)

i can walk around the world in two hours
the ocean comes up only to my thighs

only the Himalayas are taller than me

(the ISS space station is 200 miles high)

Joyce's 'Portrait' on the Tree of Life

at any moment
on the radial ontology
within a human's branch cross-section

let all the stories
in which the human is currently involved
be lit in blue

but some of these stories are still unconscious
so if the person would deny it
leave that blue
but if they'd recognise it
promote it to green

and if they occasionally notice that story
on their own
(eg when reminded by another's storytelling)
promote that to yellow

and if they know it so well
they'd mention it, if asked
promote it to red

so at any moment
we have a spectrum of awareness
of the stories we're living out

and as we mature
that spectrum shifts gradually
towards the red

and stories about ourselves
that we thought we understood
are revealed to have deeper layers

now an artist
writing an autobiography
is tasked with winnowing just those events
that most efficiently and effectively
convey the range of their lifestories
and the process of their growth

which may mean selecting
a small set of story themes
and returning to them
at successive ages
to show how their awareness evolved

and how it was quickened
or slowed
by the group-awareness of their society

see especially James Joyce
"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"

Back and fill on the Tree of Life

i just looked up
'back and fill'
and it doesn't officially mean
how i'm using it

to back off a bit for perspective
and fill in some places you missed

which is so apt
it deserves to be right

so yesterday the science-news sites
reminded me of the biologists'
Tree of Life website/project

which treats the same
dataset
from a much more fragmented perspective
by ignoring
space

and so ignoring
behavior

lifepaths tracing
life's characters

instead using the spatial dimension
to separate species
that are in fact infinitely intermingled

so i want to cultivate a habit
of selectively illuminating
sub-branches on the Tree

whether at the level of
family trees
or species
or whole phyla

you light up an individual's branch
or a cluster of individuals' branches

and propagate the lightbeam
to all their descendants
or the opposite way
to all their direct ancestors

perhaps encompassing the blurred bounds
of the species as a whole

perhaps assigning one color
to a predator species
and another
to each species of its prey

and we might also invert the Tree
to animate the dimensions
of geographical spread

unicellular life
gradually occupying every
oceanic coastline

human life filling africa
then spilling into south asia
and finally discovering
a leaky passage to the americas

no species
colonising both
water and land

so the species-subbranch
leaves vast gaps
in spacetime

the pacific ocean, say
with occasional adventurers
rafting out into nothingness
their branches terminating
alone